headlights blinding, massive repairs
negotiated, now in deep and blackest
darkness, with raw road chippings
spitting out from under the tyres and
red dust in my eyes thicker than the
smog of New Delhi.
A border was crossed, and finally,
to Odessa, at midnight, with the only
rooms seemingly available above a
twenty-four-hour car wash where the
power system for the high-pressure
pumps were loud and insistent the
whole night through. In the morning,
a walk of five hundred metres to get
instant coffee from a machine.
This was not the Odessa of the
Opera House and Potemkin Steps
well-loved from previous visits; this
was a carwash backwater nightmare.
To the coast then, with the help of
booking.com, to meet the Armenian
Hotelier.
An hour through the city, tarmac
roads with potholes for interest,
topping a rise and there, shining in
the sunshine, the sea. One hundred
metres down the hill and on the left,
the Comfort Hotel, the Armenian
Hotelier and his graduate nephew.
So friendly these two; and via
translation, good tellers of tales.
The cabanas then, to sleep; but so
thin the walls that in the room on the
left I could hear Alexandra praying
and on the right a woman elbowing
her husband to stop his snoring.
I sit on the sand, Alexandra is
swimming in the sea.
On the beach, most of the men
over the age of 45 wear Speedos.
The swimming trunks, carefully
cut to accentuate genital size and
to tuck neatly below the spreading
waistline are so popular that I
wonder if there is not a container
load nearby, recently snaffled and
sold off cheap.
The young display their beauty,
those older stand with their hands
on their hips, stomachs bursting
from Speedos and flowery bikinis
alike. To the untutored eye it would
seem pregnancy is no longer gender
specific.
A woman of fifty is standing,
talking to her man. He is suntanned,
his back is muscled and his buttocks
still good until he turns in profile.
Then he, like his wife, looks pregnant
too.
As she speaks with him, she does
not look into his face; she is focused
on the round brown belly he displays
and speaks directly to it. It is her
investment of course. In Ukraine,
the paunch is called “social savings”;
after the first few months of marriage
and passion the woman will seek
to tie him to her apron strings with
constancy of food and drink.
Her man has a moustache which
he uses to punctuate and accentuate
his speech. She cannot see for she is
looking lovingly at his belly. When
she replies she thrusts her own belly
forward and looks at him up meekly.
There are slim men on the beach.
Silver haired, military bearing.
TRAVERSE 51